GIGO

Science Books for Children

How do you tell a young child a story which uses scientific information to teach them something about how the world works? This was the question posed by a Learning Media person at the recent Science Teachers' Conference. It's trickier than it first appears -- stories have plots and characters, designed to draw us in. How do you put science into this sort of context?

Much of the science we read is presented as information -- textbooks, encyclopaedias and the like. While these are great for giving us the facts, they often fail to spark the sense of wonder and excitement that science can offer. Adults are fortunate in having access to excellent, inspiring science writers (my own favourites being Carl Sagan, Loren Eiseley and Aldo Leopold), but the language and concepts involved make it far harder to reach children, particularly the very young.

I was delighted with one example from the new Learning Media selection. It was a book designed for beginning readers called Ready, Steady, Jump!, concerning the trials of a jumping spider. The language was simple and familiar, as the title demonstrates; the photos were brilliant. And, yes, there was a beginning, a middle and an end to the story as the spider jumped, missed, climbed back up its trailing silk safety line, jumped again and made it to the new leaf.

Despite the apparent simplicity of the plot, there was a surprising amount of scientific knowledge and reasoning packed within the 12 pages of the book. You could learn a lot just by studying Nic Bishop's wonderful photographs -- by looking at the spider's eyes, by examining its legs, by noticing that it releases silk as it jumps.

But there were also more subtle things to be learned -- what does the angle of the silk tell us about the spider's first attempt to jump to the neighbouring leaf? Even very small children could see that the spider wasn't going to make it. In doing so, they were examining the information they were given, assessing it, making a prediction and then testing that prediction (by turning the page to see the spider dangling unsuccessfully from its safety line). These concepts form the basis of much of our science and it's never too early to give children the chance to learn them -- if it's in the form of a fun-to-read story, so much the better.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.